Remember what it was like listening to the car radio as a kid before you really developed a personal taste? I recall the light oozing through the backseat windows, me far out of range of the FM dial. I felt safe with the choices made for me.
What I can’t remember is one single song from that era. That’s not to say that the new release from Former, ?and nothing but the truth, is bland or unmemorable. Rather, it is successful in its intended goal, and to evaluate it in any other terms would be beside the point.
The force of Former’s efforts seem to land squarely on songwriting. These are straight-ahead pop songs. They don’t try to reinvent the wheel, just make it roll smoothly through the sticky saccharine landscape they’ve created. Everything they do, from the vocal arrangements to the heavily compressed radio-ready production, is aimed at driving home the prepackaged pop experience.
The strongest songs are spread evenly throughout the 13-song tracklist. The opener, “Lies” has the sort of anthemic energy that hearkens back to a moment present in every summer teen flick: the one where the underweight protagonist finally musters the courage to ask for a date, but has to race against time to prevent his best friend from stealing his girl. Near the middle of the album, “Crave” offers a sort of musical counterpoint. The arrangement is a little more complex, and the lyrics a little more pensive. Later they somehow deliver a hook more hooky than the hooks that hooked us before. I was hoping for a cover of the Sonny Bono co-written gem recorded by damn near everyone (my fav being the Ramones’ 1978 version) “Needles and Pins.” The album closes with the power ballad of “Please,” straight out of the Aerosmith playbook.
Everyone can relate to the comforts of nameless, faceless FM radio clamor. We feel at home in the humdrum safety of television reruns, not merely as a guilty pleasure but as a much needed catharsis and invocation of nostalgia. These are the nerves that this record touches. More discriminating tastes and cynical listeners will inevitably have to pass on this one. Though I wish I could retreat into my cocoon, I’ll have to pass too.
